The Australian bushfires have completed devastated this amazing country, with over 12 million acres burned. That’s two times the size of Maryland. Twenty-five people have perished, over 2,000 homes have been lost, and so much wildlife has been killed. It’s absolutely heart-wrenching. The last count of the loss of mammals, birds, and reptiles is up to half a billion lives lost. And video footage show animals such as koala bears, kangaroos, cattle, and more burned alive. It is an unimaginable tragedy.
In fact, the family of the late Steve Irwin have announced that they have treated 90,000 animals at their Australia Zoo wildlife Hospital.
“With so many devastating fires within Australia, my heart breaks for the people and wildlife who have lost so much,” Bindi Irwin said in an Instagram post on Friday.
Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, told NBC News that scientific experts had feared a disaster like this because of the climate crisis. “It’s really shocking and really horrible and as much as I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ climate scientists have been warning about this for a very long time — especially in Australia,” Perkins-Kirkpatrick said. “We knew that if we have drought and a heat wave, the whole country is a tinderbox. We knew it was going to happen.”
And so I wanted to put together a list of specific charities dedicated to rescuing and nursing these animals back to health.
Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital
CNN reports that two animal hospitals — Port Macquarie Koala Hospital and Currumbin Wildlife Hospital — currently have verified GoFundMe campaigns in order to help the koalas in harm’s way.
Animal rescue craft guild members are knitting mittens and pouches for burned animals and are accepting donations
Please send whatever you can, even if it is $1. Or if you are local in Australia and you can, volunteer your time. They really need us.
